Monday, March 10, 2008

8.) Let's Stay Friends - Les Savy Fav (ST. PATTY'S 2008)

Let’s Stay Friends

Les Savy Fav
Frenchkiss Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

Let’s Stay Friends is a record I’d love to play at a social gathering but fear it wouldn’t work out. Whether it be the intensity of band-leader Tim Harrington who screams and shouts wildly, or the band’s punk-leaning riffs, Les Savy Fav are intimidating to indie-rock fans on first listen. As I’ve stated before, I was one of these listeners who initially found this record too abrasive for my liking, only to become addicted in the weeks to follow.

After the thunderous warning-call of ‘Pots & Pans’, Let’s Stay Friends barrels into several highlights: the indie-meets-punk speed of ‘The Equestrian’, near dance-rock (they pioneered years ago) on ‘Patty Lee’, and ‘What Would Wolves Do?’, which begins with a New Order drum-beat before exploding into classic LSF territory.

The other reason I won’t be introducing friends to this album in a public setting is because the songwriting quality temporarily wanes. ‘Brace Yourself’ would fit in on a Sublime album with its druggy bassline, but after four minutes of it virtually unchanged, one makes a mental note to keep the remote handy. In other areas, ‘Slugs in the Shrubs’ rifles into noisy hysterics but literally cuts off, when two minutes in, it gets bored. Let’s Stay Friends features too many good songs to completely write off, especially for new fans like myself, but there are certainly a few that’ll simply pass as serviceable.

So unless you can slide these songs into your friends’ daily listening, blind-side them with ‘Scotchgard the Credit Card’ at the next big celebration. It isn't the kind of song to go by unnoticed.